


has a disease called man

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-16
Updated: 2008-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five nasty diseases Dean Winchester never caught (and one he did). Missing scenes from "Mystery Spot."</p>
            </blockquote>





	has a disease called man

On the twenty-third Tuesday they left the motel and found bodies lying in the street.

"Whoa." Dean stopped short, one hand automatically going to the gun tucked in his waistband. "What the fuck?"

The morning smelled like blood and sweat, like too many bodies and too much fear. They slowly walked across the parking lot, toward the nearest of the still, silent townspeople. It was the young woman with the stack of missing person fliers still grasped in her hand. She'd never been outside the motel before, but she'd also never been lying on her back on the street before, her face and neck and arms a grotesque patchwork of purple bruises and dark rashes.

"Dean." Sam exhaled slowly, breathing through his mouth. "This is--"

"I'm guessing you haven't seen this one before?" Dean asked. His gun was drawn, his eyes wary as he looked up and down the street. Nothing was moving, no cars or people, and the only sound beyond their own breathing was a distant radio or television, the broadcast tinny and indistinguishable.

"No," Sam said. "This is new."

"What the hell happened here? Is it some kind of..." Dean turned in a slow circle, half-heartedly pointing his gun at nothing. After a second he started to walk again, and Sam followed one step behind. "What the hell happened?"

Sam remembered lurid picture books he read as a kid, gleefully sharing the gory details with his sixth grade class and making a shoebox diorama of a popsicle stick town with red crosses on the doors. "It's... Dean, this looks like the black plague."

"No shit? That's fucked up." Dean was still looking around anxiously, still scanning the street for any sign of motion rather than watching where he was going, which was why he didn't see the uncovered manhole.

There was a gasp, a startled shriek, a wet crunch, and Sam woke up.

~

Nine days later, Sam caught the hot sauce as it tumbled from the tray, and Doris looked down at him with fierce, bloodshot eyes.

"That's new," Sam said. "Are you feeling okay?"

There was a fine red rash on her hands and arms. She swayed tiredly in place and blinked at him but didn't answer.

Sam set the bottle carefully on the table. "Doris, are you sick?"

"Sam." Across the table Dean was suddenly alert, his voice low and worried. "Sam, I think we should get out of here."

"Yeah, okay, I just--"

Before he could finish, Doris's eyes fluttered shut and she tumbled to the floor. Sam slid out of the booth to kneel beside her, and Dean was already standing, poised and tense. At the counter a man was retching onto his plate, a smear of crimson across his chin, and in another booth a pair of men muttered feverish nonsense over their coffee cups. Somebody in the kitchen was coughing violently, but the sound was quickly hidden behind a racket of falling pots and pans.

"Out," Dean said sharply. "Now."

Sam didn't waste time arguing. He was halfway to the door when he heard Dean's surprised shout.

He turned just in time to see Dean trip over Doris's foot, lose his balance, strike his head on the corner of the table.

Sam woke up.

~

It wasn't the radio that woke Sam on the forty-third Tuesday but the sound of somebody kicking in the door.

He was out of bed in a flash and fumbling around for his gun, but they were faster. There were three of them, their faces hidden behind the smooth plastic masks of biohazard suits. One of them jammed the nose of his automatic weapon under Sam's chin and shouted something, but the words were muffled by the mask and the blare of the radio.

But the other shouts, those he could hear clearly: "Who the fuck are you?" and "This is a quarantine, step outside," and "Get away from him!" and "Sir, you have to put your weapon down, _put your weapon_\--"

There was one shot, sharp and singular, followed by a quick, deafening burst, and Sam woke up.

~

They made it past noon on the forty-ninth Tuesday, but the rest of the day was a blur of confused memories and paralyzing terror for Sam.

He ate ham and cheese on rye for lunch, stopped Dean from falling down and impaling himself on a knife, wondered why his limbs felt like they were burning from within and if the wallpaper of the deli was supposed to be moving, and five hours later he was backed against a rough plank fence at the end of an alley, an entire town's worth of black-eyed citizens crowding toward him.

Dean was leading the pack. He grinned, his eyes were oily and dark, and he said Sam's name like a taunt.

Sam reached for his gun without thinking, and he woke up.

~

The diner burnt down in a grease fire on the sixty-eighth Tuesday, and on the sixty-ninth Sam stormed into the kitchen and discovered both what went into the sausages and why the cook was so uncoordinated he accidentally set himself on fire.

"I don't think you should eat any meat they serve at the diner," Sam said first thing on the seventieth Tuesday. "Remember that _X-Files_ episode 'Our Town'?"

Dean ordered waffles, ate them without incident, excused himself when he was finished.

Sam woke up a few minutes later and decided that he was glad he didn't know how Dean had managed to get himself killed in the diner bathroom.

~

"I'm going to die, dude, I really am."

Sam hesitated outside the bathroom door, his hand on the knob. "You have a stomach 'flu, you big baby. You'll be fine."

"No, really, Sammy. I think I just threw up my intestines."

"Um, yeah." Sam made a face and took his hand off the doorknob. "Hey, I have an idea. Why don't you give me some more gross details. That's just what I want to hear."

"Well, there are these chunks--"

"I was joking."

Dean moaned melodramatically, and Sam smiled in spite of himself. It was Tuesday, but the day before had been Monday. It was just a stomach 'flu. Dean would emerge from the bathroom pale and whining, Sam would shove him toward the bed and feel his forehead to gauge the fever and give him ginger ale, and in a few hours it would be Wednesday.

"Seriously, this fucking sucks. Are you sure I can't die from this?"

"You're not going to die, Dean."

"I think I'm being punished for my life of debauchery and... more debauchery. That's why this sucks so fucking much."

"I'm sure that's the reason," Sam agreed, but he was thinking about lessons and punishments, plague and pestilence, a million and one ways for the world to end. "You're not going to die."

"If you say so."

Yeah, Sam thought, I do say so.

But he didn't say it aloud, just slid to the floor outside the bathroom and closed his eyes.


End file.
